She has some criticisms for her past as an attorney, but I’m not sure why she’s so disliked now. What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?
Because she’s black and she’s a woman.
Same reason why Hillary Clinton was widely respected every year except when she ran against a man.
Hillary Clinton was widely respected every year
(source needed)
Here’s a list of objectionable stuff Hillary was involved with prior to running for president:
- Hillary Clinton’s hawkish stance on war, being more hawkish than Barack Obama and Joe Biden. She is specifically noted for advocating an escalation in Afghanistan.
- Clinton’s involvement in the 2009 military coup in Honduras. Rather than condemning the coup, Clinton pressured other countries to recognize the new right-wing government, leading to increased violence and instability in the country.
- The firing of seven employees from the travel office during the Clinton administration in 1993, an act that some critics attribute to Hillary Clinton’s influence. The fired employees were later reinstated due to public pressure.
- Controversies surrounding her commodity trades from 1978 and 1979, in which she turned an initial investment of $1,000 into nearly $100,000. No official investigations were carried out, but the incident raised eyebrows and led to criticism.
- Involvement in her husband’s controversial pardons during his presidency, including those for the owners of a carnival company convicted of bank fraud.
- A controversy regarding gifts taken from the White House upon the Clintons’ departure in 2001. Some items, worth $28,000, were meant for the White House estate and not as personal gifts for the Clintons. These items were returned after complaints from the donors.
(source needed)
Gallup used to poll her favorability pretty regularly, and until she ran for president in 2015 (from which she’s never recovered) she seldom had an underwater approval rating. i’d say the characterization of wide respect is reasonably accurate given this data, although i don’t agree with the poster’s proposed causation
While this is certainly part of it (and all of it for a large number of people), I think it is overly simplistic view and disregards her past as a DA in which she enforced a draconian truancy program.
Partly because of discrimination, partly because she lacks charisma. There are a substantial number of people that dislike her because she’s a black woman and they have biases against both, sometimes without even knowing it. There are also some people on the left that dislike her because she’s a moderate liberal that used to be a prosecutor. Honestly she’s about standard as vice presidents come, so though I’m farther to the left than her I don’t have any strong feelings on her.
- She’s a democrat. that means 42% of the population automatically hate her.
- She’s grossly inappropriate and cackles at exactly the wrong time, and that creeps people out.
- She was a “tough on weed” prosecutor who became a bleeding heart liberal overnight when she got her new job. That makes her seem disingenuous.
Just what I’ve picked up from other people, I have no feelings about her whatsoever.
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I’m not going to argue that some of the dislike she receives isn’t due to racism or misogyny. There has to be an element of that.
But yes, phony is the perfect word.
I don’t even get that from Biden. He just seems so fake from the get-go.
(Next part is irrelevant and only opinion.) But I’d rather go into the ground by someone sneaky and quiet than by an arm-flailing maniac screaming and yelling as I get beaten down into the hole lol.
She’s a racist, classist noeliberal and a fucking cop (or close enough).
Her political career has been chock-full of attacking public institutions like schools, protecting white-collar crime which destroyed countless lives, protecting child molesters in the church, implementing policy against the poor, and protecting prison slavery. I’m not sure where exactly the confusion lies.
This isn’t Facebook grandpa, you need to show your work.
At some point you need to take a degree of personal responsibility and research things for yourself. This isn’t a debate, you don’t get the luxury of being spoon-fed everything.
This is so lazy. The burden of proof is upon the claimant. Feel free to toss out wild claims without providing anything to support what you are saying, but then don’t be surprised when no one believes you.
Asking people to research things themselves is how you have genius’ like op spreading fox news smears but from the left
But like this is all common knowledge if you want to have something of use to offer to this conversation. She was the California AG, literally the top policing position. Before that she was San Francisco’s DA and ran on a platform of Tough On Crime. She’s literally is cop and many would argue by extension, racist, as in systematic.
As for her neoliberal status, I don’t think that needs to be explained.
I hate when people say “do your own research” as much as the next guy, but there is a certain degree of familiarity with the subject matter that should be expected to participate, even ACAB dude up there knows what he’s talking about.
Well, her being a cop is self-evident, but let’s review the entire comment:
She’s a racist, classist noeliberal and a fucking cop (or close enough).
Her political career has been chock-full of attacking public institutions like schools, protecting white-collar crime which destroyed countless lives, protecting child molesters in the church, implementing policy against the poor, and protecting prison slavery. I’m not sure where exactly the confusion lies.
I would argue that, frankly, her being a neoliberal should be explained, for the sake of discussion, but her being racist and classist should be. The details of her career being “chock-full” of various acts should be coupled with specific citations to reporting of those acts. And so on.
I don’t like Harris, mind, but the comment being discussed could have established its evidence in a more convincing manner.
Is Amy Goodman enough for you?
Excuse me, but at some point someone will have to do research themselves, otherwise there won’t be any knowledge.
Also, how do you know anything if you don’t do any research yourself? Do you have someone else whisper in your ear to tell you things all the time?
I know things because people teach me. Just like other people know things because i teach them. I dont tell my math students to just read the damn book and figure it out themselves lol. Vast majority of people do not have the critical thinking or media literacy skills to properly research a topic let alone a plethora of them. If you dont wanna expend the energy to properly explain things thats fine, but telling people “just look it up yourself” helps no one
The guy who wrote the book is teaching you in written form. They teach critical thinking in English class, that’s what it’s for. I had to write my first lengthy research paper in 10th grade. It’s not difficult.
Hitchens’ Razor - “what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.”
Cool and 5 seconds on Google will give you that evidence.
The Cons should love her, I don’t get it.
Woman. Of color. Democrat.
That’s a large part of why no republican (or conservative) is going to give her any respect.
This is i,t shes a fucking cop. I dont trust cops.
I get why rich people are Republicans. It pisses me off when poor people gladly vote against their own interests in order to “own the democrats.” OK but you’re still in west va coal country with mountains being pulled down and the only hope for your kids is to leave and maybe visit. And now Republicans are making child labor legal so they might not even get that opportunity.
The only thing conservatives hate more than black people having power is black women having power. So, of course conservatives hate her.
Progressives are tired of neo-liberals sucking corporate cock as hard as the republicans. She is a neo-liberal (and thus a diet conservative), so progressives don’t like her (or Biden) either.
That really just leaves neo-liberals to actually like her.
She’s not really a good public speaker for one. Not a lot of charm or charisma. She’s not good at schmoozing like Bill Clinton or Obama. A good presidential candidate needs that, and I think it’s a big part of why Al Gore and Hillary Clinton lost. She can speak well in public sometimes, but at others she sounds flat, boring, and artificial.
Charisma is a big deal. Think about Reagan Democrats and how people to this day love Reagan even though facts and hindsight analysis show that he was a terrible president who was arguably the start of America’s modern decline into horrendous oligarchy.
she’s a black woman? Seems like that’s enough for a lot of people.
Yup. Everyone here giving their own reasons for disliking her seems to be missing that the amount of vitriolic hatred spewed at her is wildly disproportionate to anything she’s actually done or failed to do.
(speaking as someone who doesn’t like her either, in that I don’t “like” 99% of politicians)
Used to really like her as senator. She was a bulldog questioning people in front of committee, and going after other senators for nonsensical arguments. When she became candidate, she became completely stage-managed to the point that she seems so phoney. I’m not suggesting that most politicians are not phoney, but she just comes off fake and smug to me.
I agree. I was a big fan of hers during Congressional testimony. But she is definitely awkward in unscripted environments and would be a poor presidential candidate in a nation where a significant portion of the electorate wants a president they can have a beer with. Additionally, her history as a prosecutor makes Democrats suspicious of her.
Republicans hate her because she’s a Black woman. They’ll make up other excuses, but none of them hold water.
This is it 100%. I think she’s great.
What has she done to engender such distaste from the public?
What has she done (that actually has improved the country) since she’s been VP that would make her tasteful to the public?
This is the real question. I’m sick of people dismissing criticisms against her because she’s black and/or a woman. Give me an actual reason to like her!
She’s definitely a horrible public speaker. I totally disagree with how she tackled truancy during her time as a DA/AG. Is this just my internalized racism speaking or can I ACTUALLY feel this way?
What roles does a VP have that front and center for policy though? Fundamentally a lot of the roles with in the executive branch are kind of invisible to the general public. Unless your neck deep into politics (and I don’t mean the cable news network… but more along the lines of reading stuff from federal register and CRS reports, and straight up political science research papers.)
unless your that deep into things what the VP does might as well be invisible
For me, it’s this:
[Harris] fought for this law, which raised the financial penalty and made it a criminal misdemeanor for parents, up to a year in jail, when their children missed at least 10 percent of school time.
I assume nearly half of the country hates her for being black and/or a woman, while some other large chunk of the country hates her for being “a cop.” I think she’s fine. She’s done the job a hell of a lot better than a whole list of other VPs I could name. And since I’ll be voting against Republicans no matter what, if a Biden-Harris ticket is the opposition I’ll be checking that box. No problem.
She’s just incompetent. Look at some interviews with her, she can’t answer basic questions and has done absolutely nothing as a VP. It has nothing to do with her being a woman or black.
I would say her track record as a district attorney while making a complete public 180 during her presidential campaign is reason enough.
Is anyone else kinda afraid they’re gonna try to turn Harris into the"heir apparent" for 2028, and we’ll have a repeat of 2016?
The single biggest problem standing between the left and sustained and meaningful control of the federal government is the complete lack of ability of voters to circle around a consensus candidate. There are several valid reasons to be critical of Harris just as there are pretty much every single Democratic Presidential decade basically of my lifetime. But Republicans vote consistently for candidates they dislike or even hate just to beat Democrats. Every single candidate for the Democratic nomination in 2016, 2020, and undoubtedly in 2028 will have some vocal subset of registered Democrat voters telling you exactly why they will never in a million years vote for them. I saw it constantly on Reddit and I don’t see any reason why it won’t continue.
Until somebody drops the magic “consensus candidate” name that somehow pleases everyone, Democratic voters are always going to be a major hurdle to their own success. And frankly I don’t think that “consensus candidate” name exists. Such is the curse of being the big tent party opposite the GOP. Republicans know they can continue winning elections for at least a little longer thanks to Democratic infighting alone.
Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.
It’s reductive, but look at the Christian Right and Trump. Trump is nowhere close to the picture of a Christian. It’s astounding he can safely cross the threshold of a church. But he promises to make sure abortion is illegal and men can’t pretend to be women to steal kids, so they vote for him. Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.
Meanwhile and to your point on the left, each candidate’s worst flaws are held as some kind of uncrossable line by people who are terminally online (which isn’t helpful) and the Democratic Party does what they can to feed this and make sure they don’t have to enact meaningful change. They just want to maintain the status quo but they get to do it with a pride flag waving behind them. If the Party establishment would just stop putting a thumb on the scale (not just against Bernie but ANYONE remotely progressive/left of the neoliberal center) and let the primary process shake out the most popular candidate, they might actually find themselves winning elections.
Replace the abortion issue with guns and you get another set of voters who will vote Republican regardless of what they might personally feel.
The funny part is, Trump suggested to take away guns first, and do due process second - and these 2nd Amendment goobers still voted for him.
The DNC doesn’t put their thumb on the scale as much as people like to pretend. The real problem is the under 40 crowd simply not showing up to vote in primaries. There is nothing stopping the same turnout in general elections happening in primaries except people refusing to get off their couches.
More accurate is: Republicans vote, Democrats don’t.
If this country had compulsory voting with sane voting days, and better protections against taking away voting rights to blacks and poors, Democrats would have a supermajority in Congress, and a Democratic president for decades.
I don’t really think compulsory voting would be that beneficial for democrats. Yes, it may boost them a few points across the board, but my general intuition about the general public is they lean towards democrats but are more socially conservative than you see in online spaces. 2020 is probably the best example: super high turnout yet Dems still clipping by with only a +4 advantage instead of the +10 predicted by looking at far more politically engaged voters.
It’s not social stuff. A lot of Americans are socially conservative, but social progressives and social libertarians (live and let live types) together make a clear supermajority. The problem isn’t that Americans are socially conservative, it’s that a large number of people have the notion that Republicans are good for the economy and Democrats are bad for the economy, and that therefore when things are economically rough they should vote in the Republicans. This group of people play a large role in why Congress flips so often.
But Republicans vote consistently for candidates they dislike or even hate just to beat Democrats.
Now, that’s just not true. The Republicans lose elections because of in-fighting too. For example, they lost the most recent election for House in Alaska to a Democrat because Begich voters didn’t want to consolidate behind Palin.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Alaska's_at-large_congressional_district_special_election
The exception that proves the rule, maybe? That election was the first to use Ranked Choice for congressional offices in Alaska. FPPT voting is a powerful thing, which is why Republicans try to stop alternatives such as Ranked Choice.
Edit to fix unclear final sentence.
The party needs to figure out what they actually stand for and focus on that. The Republicans have distinct factions but the conflicts between those factions are somewhat in the details. The factions in the Democratic party are wildly different and in direct opposition sometimes. The Democratic party has Socialists, Pacifists, and Environmentalist in the same tent as Corporatists and war hawks. Some of these factions just have zero common ground.
I agree. Dems just need to be OK with the person the DNC picks for them and vote like good little peons.
That’s not the only option. People can start participating in primaries to get the candidates they actually want. But when the general election rolls around and the other option is christofascism, yes, you need need to vote against that. Or you won’t be voting for anything ever again pretty soon.
We really need a different election system (ranked choice for one option) for the primaries to have any impact. As they stand it’s just an illusion of choice while the DNC decides who they want for their candidate and the shitty voters go along with it.
sustained and meaningful control of the federal government
You want a one party system? I’m not a big fan of the Republican party but there are some issues they are championing at the moment like free speech. Back in the day that was the Democrats, and I have no doubts it will flip flop again at some point but that just goes to show how we need at least two parties to act as a check on each other.
Silencing your ideological opponents is great and all until it’s you being silenced.
Republicans are not championing free speech. Entirely the opposite with how they’re treating LGBT folks currently.
And on that note, the Republicans are so beyond bad that yes, a one party state is actually better. To be clear, a one party state is utterly awful. That’s how terrible the Republican party is. They cannot be even remotely viable when their entire platform is hating other people.
I’m not a big fan of the Republican party but there are some issues they are championing at the moment like free speech
Free speech like this?
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Legislation in Tennessee could potentially criminalize speech that causes ‘emotional distress’ to or ‘frightens’ another person, which could be seen as a suppression of free speech (www.alternet.org/gop-revolts-against-free-speech-republicans-push-anti-protest-bills-across-the-country/).
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In Washington state, Republican Senator Doug Ericksen introduced a bill that would allow state authorities to charge protesters with “economic terrorism” if they participated in illegal demonstrations or coerced private citizens into doing so (www.alternet.org/gop-revolts-against-free-speech-republicans-push-anti-protest-bills-across-the-country/).
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In Kentucky, a bill was passed criminalizing the act of insulting a police officer (www.alternet.org/gop-revolts-against-free-speech-republicans-push-anti-protest-bills-across-the-country/).
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If the options are one liberal party and one fascist party, or just one liberal party, I would pick the one-party state every time. Anyhow, the Democrats are such an umbrella party that if they were the only party they would almost certainly break into two or more smaller parties, all of which would be far more tolerable than the Republican party.
I’m not American but I get the impression the left hates her because she’s a fairly right wing neoliberal?
When Biden was first elected, I saw one of those “what you order from Wish vs what you get” memes about this.
Had Bernie Sanders & AOC on the “expectation” side and Biden & Harris on the “reality” side.
Doesn’t help that she was a prosecutor in California during three strikes. She’s basically a cop.
Ah, that’s right. I had never heard of her until the US election and I remember looking her up and being a little dismayed.
It’s crazy how the right screams that Biden is extremely left while he’s center at BEST. Just shows how far they continue to shift right. I mean hell, some of them stopped watching Fox “news” because it became too “liberal” for their taste. That should tell you a whole lot.
It’s kind of funny, but also really fucking sad when these people scream about Biden being a far left communist who wants to destroy America with radical socialism or whatever.
I don’t know how many actually believe it sincerely. Well, a lot do, but I think there’s also an element of just shouting buzzwords without knowing what they mean. Parroting, really.
Like, dude… Please come to where I live and see that our centre-right party has identical policies to the Democrats. Overton Window is extremely fucked in America right now.
Went to a new dentist, and the hygienist started out cleaning my teeth saying she doesn’t talk about politics and likes to keep thing lite. 20 minutes later I was being told how socialism is the number one threat to America and how people need to wake up… Scary when people can be that worked up about something they clearly don’t understand. More so when the person they are talking to has a mouth full of dental tools and hasn’t said shit.
As a centrist, both sides scream that the other is to the extreme.
Right: “We should exterminate all people not like us”
Left: “We should work together and build a better future“
Centre: “Why are you so similar‽”
Literally proving my point. Nobody is saying to exterminate anyone except literal Nazis. I’ve had people claim that the left wants to be able to abort up til birth. You see how that is a gross mischarcterization of hundreds of millions of Americans? If you are claiming your side wants nothing but good and is perfect some the other is the literal devil there is something seriously wrong.
Oh fuck off mate.
We’ve all seen the end result go far-right governments when on power.
You might find this interesting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union
